They're everywhere!

Remember my pregnant friend from my last post? Well, she got the university job which really is excellent. But now we get to have lunch once a week and I feel SO guilty about having mixed feelings about that.
And one of the new doctors is visibly pregnant, as are two of the scientists. My office is just beyond the break area so I get to hear all manner of pregnancy-related chat many times a day.
But that is not the worst of it. I have to attend a mind-numbingly dull meeting Friday lunchtimes and the only good thing about that til now was that they were held in a building which has a coffee shop on the ground floor. The venue has been changed and now I have to go to the building where I had my antenatal care. And where we discovered that our daughter was dead inside me.
This is one of those times when I wish I could start drinking in the morning...

gulp

A very good friend of mine is pregnant.  While she is a good friend, she lives a very busy life out of London and we only see each other a few times a year, conducting our friendship mostly by email and phone.  So when I heard that she was pregnant, once I ran through the usual infertile woman's gamut of emotions, I was left with the overwhelming feeling of relief that the chances are I won't see her until after the baby was born.
She's coming to London on Wednesday for a meeting at the university and wants to have lunch afterwards.  I love my friend very much and I wish nothing but good things for her, her husband and her baby.  And of course I said "yes" to lunch with every appearance of delight.
But she is now 5 months pregnant.  And baby bumps still kick me in my stomach and push my insides up into my throat.

October 15th: Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day

I am the face of first and second trimester loss.
On the 28th April 2008 I lost my first baby at 13 weeks.  We didn't know the sex for sure, but I was convinced our baby was a boy and in my heart I named him Zachary Joseph.
On the 6th February 2009 I lost our darling daughter at 18 weeks.  We were still gently arguing over her first name but I knew I would have got my way.  Her name is Matilda Tui.
On Christmas Eve 2009 I lost our Little Stars, the two embryos we had transferred after IVF.

Later today I will be lighting my candle in memory of my children, and yours.

another tale from a London bus

So there I was on the way home, minding my own business and failing to level up on Angry Birds Rio when I felt a tap on my shoulder.  I looked up and saw a thin woman in a beautiful jade green velvet coat grinning toothlessly at me.
"You're just a lump of meat, darling," she said.  I must have looked exactly as puzzled as I felt because she kindly expanded, nodding towards the man sitting next to me.  "To your husband.  You're just a lump of brown meat."
My "husband" looked up from his book and we exchanged amused glances.
"He ain't anything special," she carried on.  "He can go and f*** himself.  You're just a lump of brown meat."
And then the bus came to a stop and she ambled off.

I love London!

neighbours revisited

My downstairs neighbours (as whinged about in my last post) have been making their presence felt again.  I was rudely awakened past midnight one night last week by the now-familiar bang on my front door followed by the sound of little feet pounding back down the stairs.  I furiously bounced out of bed, threw on my dressing gown and flung open my front door, intending to give the parents A Piece of My Mind.  I was stopped in my tracks, though, by the sound of voices in the hallway below.  Peering over the bannister I saw Ground Floor Neighbour (who lives directly below Mister, Missus and Young Child) talking to Missus.

Ground Floor Neighbour is a gentle, softly spoken young psychiatrist.  In the six years I have known him, I have never heard him say a harsh - or indeed loud - word.  He had clearly been pushed to his limit by Young Child that night as he told Missus exactly how he felt. Missus, to give her her due, said that she would stop Young Child using the stairs and hallways as her treadmill - and she has.  Young Child still thunders up and down the hall in their own flat, and screams for about 85% of the time she is awake (she's doing both now, actually, at 10.25 at night) but at least we now all know we won't be startled out of 5 years' growth by her banging on doors.

neighbours

I have new-ish downstairs neighbours.  They moved in a couple of months ago, and such is the nature of London life that I haven't met Mister yet.

I've met Missus, though, a few weeks ago.  I had just come in and was picking up my post when she accosted me.
"Who are you?" she frowned
"Oh hello," I smiled.  "I'm Illanare, I live in the flat above you."
"Can you prove it?"
"I'm sorry?"  (I genuinely thought I had mis-heard her)
"Can you prove you live here?  You could be anyone and I have a young child"
"Well I let myself in with my keys, I'm picking up my post and I know that I live above you.  If you need any more confirmation of my identity then just ask our other neighbours" and I stalked away in quite the temper.

I haven't met Young Child but I am familiar with her work.  She's about 5 years old and she screams.  A lot.  Sometimes I know when the family have come home before they enter the building because I can hear her screaming when the car door opens.  I do realise that it must be exhausting and frustrating for her parents (it certainly is for me and I'm a whole floor removed from the epicentre) but I also wish that they could come up with a better way of letting her blow off steam than allowing her to run up and down the communal stairs, screaming at the pitch of her healthy young lungs and hitting the front door of other flats (including mine).  It's very tiring...

five

Today would have been A's and my 5-year anniversary.
Meh.